Published the week of October 4, 2000

Trey Buffington
Real-Estate Entrepreneur
"I think of the Michelangelo painting 'The Creation of Adam,' in the Sistine Chapel. The patriarchal figure, aged with wisdom, about to touch Adam's finger. The almost-touching-but-not-touching is that we know so little, we lack the connection, we have no comprehension of the way it works, the magnitude of the mystery."

Veryl Mitchell
Greenhouse Operator, Mitchell Farms, Harviell, Mo.
"Big. Awesome. Intelligent. You name it, everything you need, he is. There's a Latin name in the Bible that means we can draw everything we need from God, like a baby from his mother's breast ... well, a lot of people don't believe in God at all. I say somebody has to be watching over us."

Janet Goddard
Writing Tutor/Fiction Writer, UM-St. Louis
"It's hard for me to come up with one image that encompasses God, though there is a description in the book of "Song of Songs" that describes God as having hair that is raven-black and wavy, loving eyes that are like doves washed in milk, a body made of bronze and silver, legs like polished marble and things like that, though I can't remember it exactly. I think, though, that the gist of it is that God is utterly beautiful, beyond our imaginations."

John Evers
Warehouse Manager
"It's an old majestic-looking man with a long white beard. I know this because recently I was in St. Boniface Church, at a wedding there, and above the altar, on the ceiling, was a painting of this old man that I'm pretty sure was supposed to be God, and he was looking down at another picture of Jesus and the 12 disciples. But there's no telling what God looks like. We won't know for sure until we're dead."